Acquitting Sprawl.

• Author: Taylor, Brian J.
• Position: Report on urban sprawl and the effects on the inner city - Brief Article

Suburban sprawl has been blamed for almost every social ill, with the most common accusations damning it for traffic congestion and the decline of the inner city. But according to a recent study, it's getting a bum rap.

In "Some Realities about Sprawl and Urban Decline"--published in the most recent issue of Housing Policy Debate, a journal of the Fannie Mae Foundation, a private (though tax funded) community development group--Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution distinguishes sprawl from general suburban development by listing 10 characteristics specific to the former, such as low-density "leapfrog" development, reliance on the private automobile, and a political order in which planning power is fragmented across several municipal authorities. According to Downs, most analysts oversimplify the problem--and possible solutions--by focusing on only a few of sprawl's defining traits.

Downs analyzed data from 1980 and 1990 in 162 urbanized areas to measure both sprawl and urban decline, using nine variables for each. Low or diminishing population density...